It’s raining on-and-off all day, so I’m staying close to home. My morning consisted of three loads of laundry intertwined with an exercycle downstairs in the workout room, Open Book for an Americano and a donut, and Trader Joe’s for dinner provisions: just a few reasons we love living in ZIP 55415, the fastest-growing urban core in the country. (The infographic is AI-generated. Maxwell’s in an 1894 building, is our usual Thursday night dinner destination.)
Category: Our Neighborhood
Building a pot of joy
Coastal Seafoods is probably the best seafood store in the Twin Cities, and it was conveniently on my walk home from my gig at the library this morning. Tonight’s menu: seafood stew with cod, halibut, peppers, onion, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, saffron, coconut milk, squeezes of lime, and anything else I can think of to round it out.
Blasting the past
Almost sculptural, giant plastic shrouds enclose the power transmission towers across the river from where we live. Decades of rust are being blasted off, followed by fresh coats of paint. On the bottom left sits the inlet for the 1908 hydroelectric plant, still taking advantage of the natural drop of St. Anthony Falls.
A little under the freeway
Our colds persist. Going a little stir-crazy, I went for a walk, starting with this tunnel under the interstate near our home, dense with metaphors. Later, at a new bookshop, a barista with the snuffles brewed me a welcome Americano.
The ultimate frequent flyers
I finally got around to seeing “Crossing the Line: The Passport Re-Imagined” at Open Book, just three blocks from our home. Here, the artist has produced passports for migratory birds; the painted eggs represent individual birds, while the cloth satchel serves as a “nest” to hold the eggs and passports. On my own travels, I’ve often been in awe of migratory birds, especially at Farewell Spit on New Zealand’s South Island, where we observed bar-tailed godwits that migrate 7,500 miles to Alaska.
Decolonizing the menu
Shared notes about our day over a dinner of indigenous ingredients at the bar at Owamni. While reservations for this James Beard Award-winning restaurant can be hard to snag, we’ve found that unreserved bar seats are usually available if we arrive early. Signs reminded us where we were, featuring tags like #landback, #86colonialism (86 is a nod to the restaurant lingo for removing an item from the menu), and the acknowledgment that we were dining on native land.
Closed on Mondays
On Mondays, I sometimes get the urge to look at art. At the start of my walk today, I popped into Open Book for “Crossing the Line: The Passport Re-Imagined.” Bad idea: like many galleries, it’s closed on Mondays. Since the cafe was open, an Americano and a donut replaced examining “themes of immigration, power, limitation, and belonging.”
Waymo in the wild
Spotted this Waymo in the wild today. They’re currently being trained for our harsh climate. I’m looking forward to having vehicles on our streets that actually stop at pedestrian crossings, pause before right turns on red, and never run red lights.
From sunrise to supper
The sun was rising as I left this morning, the start of a long day that eventually wound down at a local restaurant we had not tried before. We enjoyed dishes with names ending in au vin and en croûte while comparing notes about our day.
Transitioning to color
On our Sunday walk, with temperatures climbing into the high fifties, yesterday’s snowy, monochromatic landscape had found some color. Here at Gold Medal Park the grass and trees are still a few weeks away from fully greening up.